If you have a man who works 50 hours, and a woman who works 40 hours all year, and the man is 10% more productive as a result of his 25% longer hours, which are you more likely to reward with a larger raise?
The woman.
If the man and woman normally produce 100 widgets in 40 hours, then they're each creating 2.5 widgets per hour.
If the man works 50 hours (25% more hours) and creates 110 widgets (10% more productivity), then he's creating 2.2 widgets per hour. His productivity has gone DOWN.
The multi-lateral committee is important - you should be able to find at least one Republican and one Democrat (plus as many independants as care) to observe/do the count. Each box should have a small enough number of ballots to count in less than an hour. Then you wind up having to buy off a *lot* of people to steal an election. Sure you can buy the count at a couple of boxes, but that's way less than you can now.
In Canada, we use hand-counted paper ballots, and it would be pretty difficult to bias a vote count. Here's how voting and vote counting works:
In addition to having scrutineers (representatives from each party) present when the ballots are being counted, any ordinary citizen who wants to also has the right to watch.
And before you say that this wouldn't work in the USA because they have 10 times as many voters, note that all you need is 10 times as many people to count ballots (which shouldn't be a problem, since you have 10 times our population) and 10 times as many ballot boxes. Scalability is not an issue .
We get our election results within hours of the polls closing, with only the occasional close race taking longer to decide (if a recount takes place). Overall, our system works well, and the U.S. really ought give it a try sometime.:)
Oh, wait -- there's very little money to be made in manufacturing cardboard ballot boxes, cardboard voting booths, or in printing paper ballots you mark with a pencilled "X". And the results aren't easily rigged. Never mind, then.
U.S. residents are so hooked on the telephone that some use the telephone in the bathroom, in church and while driving, a new survey sponsored by America Online Inc. has found.
The average telephone user in the U.S. has two or three phones and spends about an hour every day using them, according to the survey, conducted by Opinion Research Corp.
Telephone dependency is so strong for 41% of survey respondents that they make telephone calls right after getting out of bed in the morning. The average user uses the telephone five times a day, according to the survey, which polled 4,012 respondents at least 18 years old in the 20 largest U.S. cities.
About a fourth of respondents acknowledged being so addicted to the telephone that they can't go more than two or three days without using the telephone. That includes vacations, during which 60% of respondents admitted using the telephone.
Unsurprisingly, all that telephone activity sometimes leads to regrets. Almost half of respondents -- 45% -- indicated they would like to have the ability to take back what they've said over the telephone.
There is also some attachment anxiety to phone calls. A significant portion of respondents -- 43% -- would like to be able to track where their gossip get forwarded.
The areas in which it's most likely to find telephone junkies are, in descending order: Miami/Fort Lauderdale, San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York and Houston.
For those interested in curbing their telephone compulsion, here are some suggestions:
Resolve not to use the telephone after a certain hour of the night, and respect the curfew.
Close the loop on an ongoing telephone discussion by picking up a pen and writing to the other person.
Consider how many phone calls you make.
Act on every phone message you receive by deleting it, forwarding it, responding to it or filing it.
I had never heard of the concept of "at-will" employment (I'm Canadian) before you mentioned it, and having looked it up, I'm amazed that the U.S. has such a thing:
From the above site: "... the USA is alone among the industrialized nations of the world in providing no protection against wrongful termination of employment."
I'm sick and tired of having TV shoved in my face almost everywhere these days. I go to the dentist and there's a TV hanging over the chair. (At least they don't mind turning it off when I ask.) I get into an elevator and there's a TV in there. I go to an amusement park and there are TVs all over the place, all cranked up LOUD so people can hear them over the noise of the rides. Our local transit system is planning to put TVs into the subway trains. And on airplanes, the 90-minute movie has morphed into non-stop video "entertainment" for almost the entire flight.
The proliferation of TVs in public spaces annoys me to no end. When I'm trying to pass the time while waiting in line, I'd rather just zone out and stare unfocussedly into the middle distance. This is almost impossible to do with a TV flashing and blaring nearby. Having a civilized conversation with a friend under such circumstances is similarly difficult.
I. DON'T. WANT. TO. WATCH. TV. I'm hoping that in a few years, people will view all these TV sets as a nuisance, in the same the way they view loud cellphone users now.
It was a telephone survey, which by law excludes the sampling of minors
Wrong. It is perfectly legal to conduct a telephone survey (or any survey, for that matter) with a minor, as long as you first obtain permission from the minor's parent or guardian.
Wow. This is the second article about my field in as many weeks. w00t!
The customers think it matters... otherwise this business wouldn't exist.
Darned right. As long as people are willing to pay us to conduct surveys, we'll happily take their money.
And if you think those in the business are bad at maths, think of who the customers are. Politicians and the such. Notorious maths flunkies. Show them some fancy pie charts and percent signs, especially those in their favor, and they're your best friend forever.
While I can't argue with your assessment of the math skills of political types, if you think they're our main customers, you're mistaken. Many political polls are sponsored by media outlets, to generate easy stories to put on their front pages. Other political polls aren't paid for by anyone -- some polling firms will do them for nothing just to increase their name recognition among the public. If you're Canadian, and you can remember a polling firm called "The Angus Reid Group", this is something they did all the time.
There's much more money to be made in consumer research, where we contact people to get their opinions about many common products or services they use or purchase. And guess what? If we call you for one of these surveys, it's very likely that we got your phone number from the company that's paying for the survey, and they usually only provide residential numbers. Any telphone numbers you provide when you sign up for a service or buy a product are fair game here. So now you're thinking you'll just leave that warranty card's "home telephone number" field blank, and you won't get called, right? Sorry -- with your name and at least part of your home address, anyone can look up your home phone number (assuming you have a land line, and that it's listed).
Anyway... I don't want to make my industry sound like telemarketing. First, we never sell anything. (Really. Unfortunately, there are many telemarketers who will pretend to be conducting a survey in order to get their foot in the door, so to speak, and after asking you a few questions, they'll hit you with a sales pitch. We hate this, because this is one of the reasons people are starting to sour on participating in surveys.) Second, we're much easier to get rid of. All you have to do is say "No!" if you don't want to participate when we call you for any specific survey. If the caller continues to badger you, chances are they're really a telemarketer trying to make quota. Finally, an interviewer from a reputable market research firm should be completely willing to tell you their company's name and contact information. (They might not be able to tell you the name of the sponsor of the survey only because you might answer the questions differently if you knew who commissioned the survey.) If the caller won't identify their employer, then again, they're probably a telemarketer.
If you're in the U.S. and you're at all curious about what market researchers are really up to, here's the consumer information page for the MRA (The Market Research Association) that many American market research and polling firms belong to:
I wouldn't use this "article" as proof of anything. It's a prime example of the dubious writing technique where you defend your position on something with whatever you can dream up that supports it, logic and factual accuracy be damned. My favourite quote:
The fact remains that security has been getting worse every year since Windows 95 was released.
And how about backing up this assertion with some examples? Whether it's true or not, where's your proof?
(I'm sure no one will read this comment because I'm about 3 hours too late, but whatever...)
First, IAAMR (I am a market researcher.) I wasn't able to get into the survey, but a Newsforge reader posted the questions here.
I've seen a lot of consumer surveys over the years, and this looks fairly typical. Most surveys of this nature are proprietary -- the research results will be for internal use only and will not be released to the public, mainly because most companies don't want their competitors or detractors to find out about their product development or marketing plans in advance. Whenever possible, companies will try to prevent anyone from even knowing that they're conducting a survey. [1] Obviously, in this case, there's no way that Microsoft can prevent the (Linux-using) world at large from finding out that they're doing a survey, but I guarantee you that they do not plan to release the results to anyone outside Microsoft.
This sort of questionnaire is designed to find out:
(a) What do people like about our products/our brand/our image?
(b) What do people dislike about our products/our brand/our image?
(c) How can we make people in our target market associate us with the things mentioned in section (a) rather than (b)?
The questions that are of the most interest to Microsoft will be those asking for the respondent's opinions:
10. Who would you recommend use Linux at home?
11. Rank the reasons you like Linux for the home.
12. Rank the importance of various tasks you use your home Linux system for.
15. List the top one or two possible improvements that you would like to see made to Windows.
16. List the top one or two improvements that you would like to see made to Linux.
The rest of the questions require factual responses, and the responses gathered from them will be used to see if there are any patterns in the opinion data. In market research data analysis, we're not looking at the opinions of any specific individual; only those of various groups (Linux novices vs. experts, dual-booters vs. non, etc.), so you needn't worry about any personal retribution from Microsoft. They won't care that John Doe in Nebraska likes Linux for the home because it's "More secure than Windows", but they will be interested to learn that in general, the people who dual boot (Question 14) are more likely than those who don't to say that they like Linux for the home because it has "Better command line" (Question 11).
You may have noticed the italicized phrase "in our target market" in point (c) above. Microsoft isn't going to try to convince the hardcore Linux zealots(TM) to switch to Windows. They're going after people who aren't totally committed to either Linux or Windows yet. People who have a strong preference for Windows are already in the bag; and it would be a waste of time and money to try to convert the diehard Linux advocates. Any product development or advertising based on the results of this survey will have only 2 aims: to make the lukewarm Windows users feel that they've made the right decision, and to make the lukewarm Linux users feel that they're missing out on something better.
[1] Case in point: While I was typing this, my phone rang. It was a market research company (one of my company's competitors) conducting a survey. I agreed to participate, and lied when they asked, "Do you work for a market research company?" (People in my field do this all the time to find out what contracts our competitors have been awarded. We like to call it "gathering competitive intelligence".) Unfortunately, one of my responses to another question disqualified me from the survey. But now I know that our competitor has a contract to conduct research about tooth whitening for a manufacturer of dental care products. I'll be checking with our sales department on Monday to see if we recently lost out on a bid for this contract.
Exactly. While the volume of liquid in these supersized drinks is impressive, what's truly scary about them is the amount of sugar they contain.
A 355 ml (12 oz) can of an average soft drink contains around 40 g of sugar. Back when I still drank the stuff, I always noticed that fountain soft drinks tasted weaker than canned/bottled ones, so let's assume that 355 ml of fountain soft drink contains 35 g of sugar. Now for the fun part . . .
Think about that Super Big Gulp you're about to guzzle: 1.3 L (44 oz) of fluid, and 128 g of sugar. For those of you who don't do metric, that's a quarter of a pound of sugar. (It's also about 500 calories, which is about 25% of the average-sized sendentary person's daily requirement.)
Think about that 2 L (64 oz) bottle of Coke you went through last night. That's 225 g, or half a pound of sugar, and a little over 1000 calories. Ever wondered why you've been slowly gaining weight?
There's nothing wrong with the occasional soft drink (I still have a weakness for Grape Crush), but the best thing with which to slake your thirst is plain old water. No sugar. No calories. And if you live where the tap water's drinkable, it's almost free.
That article pretty much described my entire workday as it was up until I quit last month. I simply couldn't deal with the near-constant interruptions all day long.
There is a difference, however between self-imposed interruptions (such as checking Slashdot) and other-imposed interruptions (such as your boss asking you to go to his/her office for an unscheduled meeting). The other-imposed interruptions are far more damaging, particularly when they occur seemingly at random. I normally get pretty absorbed in whatever I'm doing, but when I'm aware that I could be interrupted by the phone or by a person at any moment, I find that I can't concentrate. Just knowing that I'm probably not going to be permitted to finish whatever I'm doing is enough to keep me from getting absorbed enough to be productive.
Not surprisingly, my home telephone's ringer is more or less permanently set to "OFF"...
"The serious thing for us is people willfully misusing the computer system and trying to hide what they were trying to do..."
Of course they tried to hide what they were trying to do! What would have happened if they had gone to the brass and said, "Um, we'd like to set up a chat room on the computer network. Don't worry, we won't let anyone in without an invitation. And we certainly won't open up any security holes. Okay?"
For obvious reasons, CIA employees are required to abide by very strict rules governing, among other things, what they may and may not do, who they may and may not talk to, and where they may and may not go. These rules are meant to be followed to the letter (the former director who used his home computer to create a top-secret document notwithstanding). Any violation of these rules means that security may have been compromised. I'm sure that potential security breaches worry the CIA brass just as much as actual ones, because when you find a hole, you really can't be certain that something didn't get in or get out through it.
Unfortunately, the above rules conflict with basic human nature. We are inquisitive animals, and we want to explore systems, whether they are computer systems, social systems, philsophical systems, etc. As soon as people are told not to do something (especially if they aren't told the (real) reason for the rule), they become even more interested in the forbidden behaviour than they were before. If you restrict a person's freedom to explore, there is always the chance that he will go ahead and explore anyway, and if he's smart, he'll go to great lengths to avoid detection of his activities. (Hmmm... sounds like one of the prerequisites for becoming a spook. Maybe they should give these guys medals.)
I'm not really surprised that this happened, but if the CIA were really as paranoid about security as they should be, this would have been uncovered much sooner.
(IANAL) From a regulatory perspective, this could get hairy. Let's imagine for a moment that a US-based online gaming company decides to start paying its "volunteers" the minimum wage. What does this mean for the volunteers who are not US citizens or residents?
Would they need to get green cards to be allowed to "work" for the gaming company? Their employer is in the US, but they are not, and likely will never be.
To be permitted to pay non-US volunteers, would the gaming company first have to prove that that there was a shortage of US volunteers? If so, how could they possibly prove this?
Would non-US volunteers have to pay taxes to the US government? The complexity of the US tax forms is legendary...just the mere threat of having to fill them out each year would probably be a sufficient deterrent to non-US volunteers.:)
Next, let's flip the above scenario. What would happen if a non-US-based online gaming company were using a few US volunteers? What sort of red tape would this mean for them?
Finally, how could the gaming company ever really know where their volunteers were based, anyway? It could be possible for a non-US volunteer, for example, to obfuscate his geographical location in such a way as to appear to be working from inside the US.
Sounds like a potential goldmine for the lawyers...
Je pense que Slashdot est tres amusant aujourd'hui. Beaucoup des gens ne seront pas d'accord avec moi. D'aucuns disent que cette blague n'est pas amusant. Ils exigent leurs "Nouvelles pour les Nerdes", et ils les exigent maintenant. Ils ne comprennent pas que c'est un poisson d'Avril.
(Ne critique pas ma grammaire, s'il vous plait. J'ecrivis cette note avec l'aide du Dictionnaire Larousse, mais je n'employai pas le Babelfish. Quant a les accents manquant, mords-moi.:)
Actually, a better statistic is whether Women CS majors are declining at the same rates as Men...
...If , however, the attendance of women is becoming smaller at a different proportion than Men or other groups, then there is a problem.
There was a story about that very subject here last August. Unfortunately, the link to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch story it referred to no longer works, and I don't have the patience to wait for the archive search page to load. As far as I can remember, the premise was that the percentage of women in CS programs was declining. The evidence seemed to be more factual and less anecdotal than the Anita Borg interview we're discussing now.
If the percentage of female CS majors is what's declining, this might be the reason:
1) The people(of both sexes) who are computer-crazy are going into CS at the same rate as always. No problem here. 2) However, any decline in the percentage of women could be due to a huge increase in the number of men who have gone into CS in recent years, many of whom might not really be all that talented, but who want to go "where the money is" (in their perception).
To wit: 15 years ago, you might have a class of size X, with M males and F females. Now, you see classes of size X + (3 * M), with (4 * M) males and F females. The women are still there, in the same numbers, and they're just as interested as they always were. The extra (3 * M) men, on the other hand, are studying CS because they want the prestige and (they hope) the money that goes with earning the hot-degree-of-the-moment.
Remember a few years back, when MBA enrolment ballooned because it was the hot degree to have? When students viewed it as a ticket to prestigious management jobs and ridulously inflated salaries? Remember a few years further back, when the same thing happened with law degrees? Computer Science has been the "degree-in-demand" for a while now, and as soon as the next big degree appears on the radar, things will settle back down.
Maybe men are more likely to study a field that isn't really well matched to their interests, provided that the potential payoff (in terms of money and prestige) is high enough. Even if other people say to these guys "Hey, what are you studying CS for? You're much better at English...", maybe they aren't as likely to listen.
And just because no post would be complete without anecdotal evidence...:)
I am a female CS major at the University of Toronto. Despite the fact that my favourite (and best) subject was math right up until grade 12, I decided to enroll in a humanities BA. I couldn't figure out why I hated school so much all of a sudden, and eventually dropped out. 4 years later, I returned, switched to CS, and have been insanely happy ever since. The gender balance here seems to be pretty good (at least for the 1st and 2nd year courses), but I've overheard enough conversations between male students in the computer lab to conclude that many of them are in CS for reasons other than aptitude or interest. Personally, I wouldn't mind making tons of money, but my main motivation is that if I'm going to be in the working for 30-40 years, then I want to be doing something I enjoy.
It's been said before that many of the "clueless Linux bigots" are teens and young adults. Linux isn't the only thing that young people defend so passionately. Obsessions like this are just part of growing up.
Have you ever become engaged in a heated "They SUCK!" "No, they ROCK!" debate over a band, or a writer, or a director? Neither person will ever see the other's point of view. All you can do is hope that eventually, a new band/writer/director will come along, and the debate will fizzle out. Just ignore them and wait.
Maybe it's time to turn David Burt's revisionist statistical analysis against him. Of the URLs that were "correctly" blocked, how many of them came from the same user session? For example, let's say that one user tries typing in the URLs for 20 pr0n sites, hoping that one of them will work. In the filtering logs, this will look like an impressive number, because many people will assume that it represents 20 different users. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the attempted pr0n/drug/gambling surfing was the work of a very small number of library patrons. Hell, some of them might just have been people who wondered what would happen if they tried to view a blocked site... WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP! (Red light over the library patron's terminal flashing) The P.A. system crackles... Security to terminal #3! Security to terminal #3! Suspect is attempting to view www.sexxx.com! Shoot to kill!
I was twelve. I was in the school library. And I was in love. We had only an hour together each day after school let out, and I didn't want to waste a minute. My friends had all headed home to leaf through their teen magazines, gaze at their music posters, and gossip about boys. They had their dreams...I had the real thing.
Sure, our relationship was a bit one-sided. He didn't say much; I told him what to do and he did it. Animated stick figures? Sure. "Guess a number from 1 to 100" games? No problem. I was clumsy at first, and he would often complain, uttering "?SYNTAX ERROR" when I did something that displeased him. Fortunately, as we got to know each other better, these little outbursts became less frequent.
I must confess that for a while, I was obsessed with killing him. I had heard that if I POKEd him in a particular place, he'd explode. On several occasions, I'd start running a program that POKEd values increasing from 0, hoping to get to the magic number. Alas, my plans were always thwarted by the school librarian. She'd come around and turn him off at closing time.
Eventually, we grew apart. I still visited him from time to time, but meanwhile, I was spending more and more time with a friend's VIC-20. The menage a trois satisfied me for a few months, but came to an abrupt end when my parents introduced me to a C64.
Since that time, I've gone through numerous relationships with other computers. The 8088, the 486, all kinds of Pentiums, and my latest fling, the Sparc. It's been fun, but my fondest memories will always be of heavy PETting in the library after school.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you know that you can play Scrabble on Scrabulous' website directly, without having to be on Facebook?
http://www.scrabulous.com/
The multi-lateral committee is important - you should be able to find at least one Republican and one Democrat (plus as many independants as care) to observe/do the count. Each box should have a small enough number of ballots to count in less than an hour. Then you wind up having to buy off a *lot* of people to steal an election. Sure you can buy the count at a couple of boxes, but that's way less than you can now.
t m
:)
In Canada, we use hand-counted paper ballots, and it would be pretty difficult to bias a vote count. Here's how voting and vote counting works:
http://www.wheresthepaper.org/CountPaperBallots.h
In addition to having scrutineers (representatives from each party) present when the ballots are being counted, any ordinary citizen who wants to also has the right to watch.
And before you say that this wouldn't work in the USA because they have 10 times as many voters, note that all you need is 10 times as many people to count ballots (which shouldn't be a problem, since you have 10 times our population) and 10 times as many ballot boxes. Scalability is not an issue .
We get our election results within hours of the polls closing, with only the occasional close race taking longer to decide (if a recount takes place). Overall, our system works well, and the U.S. really ought give it a try sometime.
Oh, wait -- there's very little money to be made in manufacturing cardboard ballot boxes, cardboard voting booths, or in printing paper ballots you mark with a pencilled "X". And the results aren't easily rigged. Never mind, then.
Was that airline JetsGo, by any chance? It wouldn't surprise me to learn that they were running their fleet management software on a single box.
The she's obviously management material, and should be promoted ASAP.
U.S. residents are so hooked on the telephone that some use the telephone in the bathroom, in church and while driving, a new survey sponsored by America Online Inc. has found.
The average telephone user in the U.S. has two or three phones and spends about an hour every day using them, according to the survey, conducted by Opinion Research Corp.
Telephone dependency is so strong for 41% of survey respondents that they make telephone calls right after getting out of bed in the morning. The average user uses the telephone five times a day, according to the survey, which polled 4,012 respondents at least 18 years old in the 20 largest U.S. cities.
About a fourth of respondents acknowledged being so addicted to the telephone that they can't go more than two or three days without using the telephone. That includes vacations, during which 60% of respondents admitted using the telephone.
Unsurprisingly, all that telephone activity sometimes leads to regrets. Almost half of respondents -- 45% -- indicated they would like to have the ability to take back what they've said over the telephone.
There is also some attachment anxiety to phone calls. A significant portion of respondents -- 43% -- would like to be able to track where their gossip get forwarded.
The areas in which it's most likely to find telephone junkies are, in descending order: Miami/Fort Lauderdale, San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York and Houston.
For those interested in curbing their telephone compulsion, here are some suggestions:
Resolve not to use the telephone after a certain hour of the night, and respect the curfew.
Close the loop on an ongoing telephone discussion by picking up a pen and writing to the other person.
Consider how many phone calls you make.
Act on every phone message you receive by deleting it, forwarding it, responding to it or filing it.
Go without the telephone one day per week.
I don't see any ads on Roland's site anymore. Of course, it helps that I just added proxy.blogads.com to my hosts file. :)
I had never heard of the concept of "at-will" employment (I'm Canadian) before you mentioned it, and having looked it up, I'm amazed that the U.S. has such a thing:
History of At-Will Employment Law in the USA
From the above site:
"... the USA is alone among the industrialized nations of the world in providing no protection against wrongful termination of employment."
I'm sick and tired of having TV shoved in my face almost everywhere these days. I go to the dentist and there's a TV hanging over the chair. (At least they don't mind turning it off when I ask.) I get into an elevator and there's a TV in there. I go to an amusement park and there are TVs all over the place, all cranked up LOUD so people can hear them over the noise of the rides. Our local transit system is planning to put TVs into the subway trains. And on airplanes, the 90-minute movie has morphed into non-stop video "entertainment" for almost the entire flight.
The proliferation of TVs in public spaces annoys me to no end. When I'm trying to pass the time while waiting in line, I'd rather just zone out and stare unfocussedly into the middle distance. This is almost impossible to do with a TV flashing and blaring nearby. Having a civilized conversation with a friend under such circumstances is similarly difficult.
I. DON'T. WANT. TO. WATCH. TV. I'm hoping that in a few years, people will view all these TV sets as a nuisance, in the same the way they view loud cellphone users now.
It was a telephone survey, which by law excludes the sampling of minors
Wrong. It is perfectly legal to conduct a telephone survey (or any survey, for that matter) with a minor, as long as you first obtain permission from the minor's parent or guardian.
Wow. This is the second article about my field in as many weeks. w00t!
The customers think it matters ... otherwise this business wouldn't exist.
Darned right. As long as people are willing to pay us to conduct surveys, we'll happily take their money.
And if you think those in the business are bad at maths, think of who the customers are. Politicians and the such. Notorious maths flunkies. Show them some fancy pie charts and percent signs, especially those in their favor, and they're your best friend forever.
While I can't argue with your assessment of the math skills of political types, if you think they're our main customers, you're mistaken. Many political polls are sponsored by media outlets, to generate easy stories to put on their front pages. Other political polls aren't paid for by anyone -- some polling firms will do them for nothing just to increase their name recognition among the public. If you're Canadian, and you can remember a polling firm called "The Angus Reid Group", this is something they did all the time.
There's much more money to be made in consumer research, where we contact people to get their opinions about many common products or services they use or purchase. And guess what? If we call you for one of these surveys, it's very likely that we got your phone number from the company that's paying for the survey, and they usually only provide residential numbers. Any telphone numbers you provide when you sign up for a service or buy a product are fair game here. So now you're thinking you'll just leave that warranty card's "home telephone number" field blank, and you won't get called, right? Sorry -- with your name and at least part of your home address, anyone can look up your home phone number (assuming you have a land line, and that it's listed).
Anyway ... I don't want to make my industry sound like telemarketing. First, we never sell anything. (Really. Unfortunately, there are many telemarketers who will pretend to be conducting a survey in order to get their foot in the door, so to speak, and after asking you a few questions, they'll hit you with a sales pitch. We hate this, because this is one of the reasons people are starting to sour on participating in surveys.) Second, we're much easier to get rid of. All you have to do is say "No!" if you don't want to participate when we call you for any specific survey. If the caller continues to badger you, chances are they're really a telemarketer trying to make quota. Finally, an interviewer from a reputable market research firm should be completely willing to tell you their company's name and contact information. (They might not be able to tell you the name of the sponsor of the survey only because you might answer the questions differently if you knew who commissioned the survey.) If the caller won't identify their employer, then again, they're probably a telemarketer.
If you're in the U.S. and you're at all curious about what market researchers are really up to, here's the consumer information page for the MRA (The Market Research Association) that many American market research and polling firms belong to:
http://www.mra-net.org/for_consumer/index.cfm
I wouldn't use this "article" as proof of anything. It's a prime example of the dubious writing technique where you defend your position on something with whatever you can dream up that supports it, logic and factual accuracy be damned. My favourite quote:
The fact remains that security has been getting worse every year since Windows 95 was released.
And how about backing up this assertion with some examples? Whether it's true or not, where's your proof?
(I'm sure no one will read this comment because I'm about 3 hours too late, but whatever...)
First, IAAMR (I am a market researcher.) I wasn't able to get into the survey, but a Newsforge reader posted the questions here.
I've seen a lot of consumer surveys over the years, and this looks fairly typical. Most surveys of this nature are proprietary -- the research results will be for internal use only and will not be released to the public, mainly because most companies don't want their competitors or detractors to find out about their product development or marketing plans in advance. Whenever possible, companies will try to prevent anyone from even knowing that they're conducting a survey. [1] Obviously, in this case, there's no way that Microsoft can prevent the (Linux-using) world at large from finding out that they're doing a survey, but I guarantee you that they do not plan to release the results to anyone outside Microsoft.
This sort of questionnaire is designed to find out:
The questions that are of the most interest to Microsoft will be those asking for the respondent's opinions:
The rest of the questions require factual responses, and the responses gathered from them will be used to see if there are any patterns in the opinion data. In market research data analysis, we're not looking at the opinions of any specific individual; only those of various groups (Linux novices vs. experts, dual-booters vs. non, etc.), so you needn't worry about any personal retribution from Microsoft. They won't care that John Doe in Nebraska likes Linux for the home because it's "More secure than Windows", but they will be interested to learn that in general, the people who dual boot (Question 14) are more likely than those who don't to say that they like Linux for the home because it has "Better command line" (Question 11).
You may have noticed the italicized phrase "in our target market" in point (c) above. Microsoft isn't going to try to convince the hardcore Linux zealots(TM) to switch to Windows. They're going after people who aren't totally committed to either Linux or Windows yet. People who have a strong preference for Windows are already in the bag; and it would be a waste of time and money to try to convert the diehard Linux advocates. Any product development or advertising based on the results of this survey will have only 2 aims: to make the lukewarm Windows users feel that they've made the right decision, and to make the lukewarm Linux users feel that they're missing out on something better.
[1] Case in point: While I was typing this, my phone rang. It was a market research company (one of my company's competitors) conducting a survey. I agreed to participate, and lied when they asked, "Do you work for a market research company?" (People in my field do this all the time to find out what contracts our competitors have been awarded. We like to call it "gathering competitive intelligence".) Unfortunately, one of my responses to another question disqualified me from the survey. But now I know that our competitor has a contract to conduct research about tooth whitening for a manufacturer of dental care products. I'll be checking with our sales department on Monday to see if we recently lost out on a bid for this contract.
Conclusion? Public transit is faster than dial-up.
Logically, assuming that good cooking is the desired outcome here, YOU should do the cooking.
Next question
Exactly. While the volume of liquid in these supersized drinks is impressive, what's truly scary about them is the amount of sugar they contain.
A 355 ml (12 oz) can of an average soft drink contains around 40 g of sugar. Back when I still drank the stuff, I always noticed that fountain soft drinks tasted weaker than canned/bottled ones, so let's assume that 355 ml of fountain soft drink contains 35 g of sugar. Now for the fun part . . .
Think about that Super Big Gulp you're about to guzzle: 1.3 L (44 oz) of fluid, and 128 g of sugar. For those of you who don't do metric, that's a quarter of a pound of sugar. (It's also about 500 calories, which is about 25% of the average-sized sendentary person's daily requirement.)
Think about that 2 L (64 oz) bottle of Coke you went through last night. That's 225 g, or half a pound of sugar, and a little over 1000 calories. Ever wondered why you've been slowly gaining weight?
There's nothing wrong with the occasional soft drink (I still have a weakness for Grape Crush), but the best thing with which to slake your thirst is plain old water. No sugar. No calories. And if you live where the tap water's drinkable, it's almost free.
That article pretty much described my entire workday as it was up until I quit last month. I simply couldn't deal with the near-constant interruptions all day long.
There is a difference, however between self-imposed interruptions (such as checking Slashdot) and other-imposed interruptions (such as your boss asking you to go to his/her office for an unscheduled meeting). The other-imposed interruptions are far more damaging, particularly when they occur seemingly at random. I normally get pretty absorbed in whatever I'm doing, but when I'm aware that I could be interrupted by the phone or by a person at any moment, I find that I can't concentrate. Just knowing that I'm probably not going to be permitted to finish whatever I'm doing is enough to keep me from getting absorbed enough to be productive.
Not surprisingly, my home telephone's ringer is more or less permanently set to "OFF"...
Of course they tried to hide what they were trying to do! What would have happened if they had gone to the brass and said, "Um, we'd like to set up a chat room on the computer network. Don't worry, we won't let anyone in without an invitation. And we certainly won't open up any security holes. Okay?"
For obvious reasons, CIA employees are required to abide by very strict rules governing, among other things, what they may and may not do, who they may and may not talk to, and where they may and may not go. These rules are meant to be followed to the letter (the former director who used his home computer to create a top-secret document notwithstanding). Any violation of these rules means that security may have been compromised. I'm sure that potential security breaches worry the CIA brass just as much as actual ones, because when you find a hole, you really can't be certain that something didn't get in or get out through it.
Unfortunately, the above rules conflict with basic human nature. We are inquisitive animals, and we want to explore systems, whether they are computer systems, social systems, philsophical systems, etc. As soon as people are told not to do something (especially if they aren't told the (real) reason for the rule), they become even more interested in the forbidden behaviour than they were before. If you restrict a person's freedom to explore, there is always the chance that he will go ahead and explore anyway, and if he's smart, he'll go to great lengths to avoid detection of his activities. (Hmmm ... sounds like one of the prerequisites for becoming a spook. Maybe they should give these guys medals.)
I'm not really surprised that this happened, but if the CIA were really as paranoid about security as they should be, this would have been uncovered much sooner.
(IANAL) From a regulatory perspective, this could get hairy. Let's imagine for a moment that a US-based online gaming company decides to start paying its "volunteers" the minimum wage. What does this mean for the volunteers who are not US citizens or residents?
Next, let's flip the above scenario. What would happen if a non-US-based online gaming company were using a few US volunteers? What sort of red tape would this mean for them?
Finally, how could the gaming company ever really know where their volunteers were based, anyway? It could be possible for a non-US volunteer, for example, to obfuscate his geographical location in such a way as to appear to be working from inside the US.
Sounds like a potential goldmine for the lawyers...
Any questions?
Je pense que Slashdot est tres amusant aujourd'hui. Beaucoup des gens ne seront pas d'accord avec moi. D'aucuns disent que cette blague n'est pas amusant. Ils exigent leurs "Nouvelles pour les Nerdes", et ils les exigent maintenant. Ils ne comprennent pas que c'est un poisson d'Avril.
(Ne critique pas ma grammaire, s'il vous plait. J'ecrivis cette note avec l'aide du Dictionnaire Larousse, mais je n'employai pas le Babelfish. Quant a les accents manquant, mords-moi. :)
Actually, a better statistic is whether Women CS majors are declining at the same rates as Men...
...If , however, the attendance of women is becoming smaller at a different proportion than Men or other groups, then there is a problem.
There was a story about that very subject here last August. Unfortunately, the link to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch story it referred to no longer works, and I don't have the patience to wait for the archive search page to load. As far as I can remember, the premise was that the percentage of women in CS programs was declining. The evidence seemed to be more factual and less anecdotal than the Anita Borg interview we're discussing now.
If the percentage of female CS majors is what's declining, this might be the reason:
To wit: 15 years ago, you might have a class of size X, with M males and F females. Now, you see classes of size X + (3 * M), with (4 * M) males and F females. The women are still there, in the same numbers, and they're just as interested as they always were. The extra (3 * M) men, on the other hand, are studying CS because they want the prestige and (they hope) the money that goes with earning the hot-degree-of-the-moment.
Remember a few years back, when MBA enrolment ballooned because it was the hot degree to have? When students viewed it as a ticket to prestigious management jobs and ridulously inflated salaries? Remember a few years further back, when the same thing happened with law degrees? Computer Science has been the "degree-in-demand" for a while now, and as soon as the next big degree appears on the radar, things will settle back down.
Maybe men are more likely to study a field that isn't really well matched to their interests, provided that the potential payoff (in terms of money and prestige) is high enough. Even if other people say to these guys "Hey, what are you studying CS for? You're much better at English...", maybe they aren't as likely to listen.
And just because no post would be complete without anecdotal evidence... :)
I am a female CS major at the University of Toronto. Despite the fact that my favourite (and best) subject was math right up until grade 12, I decided to enroll in a humanities BA. I couldn't figure out why I hated school so much all of a sudden, and eventually dropped out. 4 years later, I returned, switched to CS, and have been insanely happy ever since. The gender balance here seems to be pretty good (at least for the 1st and 2nd year courses), but I've overheard enough conversations between male students in the computer lab to conclude that many of them are in CS for reasons other than aptitude or interest. Personally, I wouldn't mind making tons of money, but my main motivation is that if I'm going to be in the working for 30-40 years, then I want to be doing something I enjoy.
Have you ever become engaged in a heated "They SUCK!" "No, they ROCK!" debate over a band, or a writer, or a director? Neither person will ever see the other's point of view. All you can do is hope that eventually, a new band/writer/director will come along, and the debate will fizzle out. Just ignore them and wait.
Maybe it's time to turn David Burt's revisionist statistical analysis against him.
Of the URLs that were "correctly" blocked, how many of them came from the same user session? For example, let's say that one user tries typing in the URLs for 20 pr0n sites, hoping that one of them will work. In the filtering logs, this will look like an impressive number, because many people will assume that it represents 20 different users. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the attempted pr0n/drug/gambling surfing was the work of a very small number of library patrons. Hell, some of them might just have been people who wondered what would happen if they tried to view a blocked site...
WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP! (Red light over the library patron's terminal flashing) The P.A. system crackles... Security to terminal #3! Security to terminal #3! Suspect is attempting to view www.sexxx.com! Shoot to kill!
I was twelve. I was in the school library. And I was in love. We had only an hour together each day after school let out, and I didn't want to waste a minute. My friends had all headed home to leaf through their teen magazines, gaze at their music posters, and gossip about boys. They had their dreams...I had the real thing.
Sure, our relationship was a bit one-sided. He didn't say much; I told him what to do and he did it. Animated stick figures? Sure. "Guess a number from 1 to 100" games? No problem. I was clumsy at first, and he would often complain, uttering "?SYNTAX ERROR" when I did something that displeased him. Fortunately, as we got to know each other better, these little outbursts became less frequent.
I must confess that for a while, I was obsessed with killing him. I had heard that if I POKEd him in a particular place, he'd explode. On several occasions, I'd start running a program that POKEd values increasing from 0, hoping to get to the magic number. Alas, my plans were always thwarted by the school librarian. She'd come around and turn him off at closing time.
Eventually, we grew apart. I still visited him from time to time, but meanwhile, I was spending more and more time with a friend's VIC-20. The menage a trois satisfied me for a few months, but came to an abrupt end when my parents introduced me to a C64.
Since that time, I've gone through numerous relationships with other computers. The 8088, the 486, all kinds of Pentiums, and my latest fling, the Sparc. It's been fun, but my fondest memories will always be of heavy PETting in the library after school.